The Israel Navy (IN) will deploy its first reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in January.

The IN has been allocated a few Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) Mahatz I (also known as Heron) medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAVs out of several dozen recently acquired by the Israel Air Force (IAF). Two UAVs will be operated jointly by the IAF and IN for maritime patrol missions.

The IN-designated Mahatz UAVs are equipped with EL/M-2022U UAV maritime patrol radars from IAI’s Elta subsidiary featuring automatic detection and tracking of maritime surface targets. Providing range signature and inverse synthetic aperture radar (RS and ISAR) imaging, combined with autonomous classification, the display video and data of the sea surface are transmitted via a datalink to the ground control station.

Source and more info: Jane’s